New supercomputer to debut in July

Staff Writer, with CNA

A Taiwan-made supercomputer that is expected to be listed among the 100 fastest in the world will start operating in July as part of the Republic of China (ROC) centennial celebrations, researchers said yesterday.

The building of the supercomputer is part of a science project initiated by the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL).

The center’s goals include setting up biomedical research centers, developing autonomic space exploration systems, forming alliances for exchanges of nano-scale technologies and launching a large research ship, NARL president Chen Wen-hwa (陳文華) said.

The new supercomputer, with a processing speed of 170 trillion floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), should rank between 51st and 55th among the world’s most powerful computers when it goes into operation, and it should remain among the top 100 for the next two years, said Chiang Kuo-ning (江國寧), director of the National Center for High-Performance Computing.

The supercomputer is being built by Acer at a cost of NT$300 million (US$10.3 million) and will provide a wider range of science computing services than the center’s current supercomputer, which has a processing speed of 20 trillion FLOPS, Chiang said.

Estimated annual electricity consumption by the new supercomputer could reach NT$30 million to NT$50 million, he said.

While 30 percent of the top 100 supercomputers in the world are used for financial operations, the supercomputers in Taiwan have been used to boost scientific research, including physics and chemistry, Chiang said.